To coincide with the Manchester International Festival’s Industrial music drama, Cotton Panic!, New Manchester Walks is running two special walks devoted to Manchester’s remarkable cotton history.

This is the first: Cottonopolis – Mills & Boom – visiting the last remaining city centre mills, towering tributes to Mammon where the workers choked over the flax and earned a pittance buoying Manchester’s main industry at a time when the city was the world’s leading centre for cotton production and manufacture.

We will tell the story of how Manchester came to occupy this supreme commercial position, despite the obstacles: the Luddites burning down the first cotton mills, industrial inaction and rapacious magnates.

See Walks & Tours: Cotton for more info.